


Insomnia

by GiseeRouchon



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Insomnia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:54:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1538363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiseeRouchon/pseuds/GiseeRouchon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's been having trouble sleeping....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

Ray lay, suspended in that mysterious place that lies somewhere between wakefulness and sleep.

The bed was at last quite comfortably warm and a small part of his mind tuned into the relentless sound of the rain, still slamming against the windows as it had been all day and indeed much of the past week. Bodie lay close by- arm flung across his face in sleep, snoring slightly- far away and out of reach.

Ray smiled inwardly at the memory of the evening just past, and traced his fingers lightly over the waxy, pale skin of his partner’s shoulder -by day so tautly muscled, but relaxed now- causing a slight, involuntary twitch like a horse bothered by a fly- and down his side to rest lightly on his well-upholstered hip, spooning towards his warmth and seeking the oblivion of sleep that nowadays seemed destined to elude him.

Many nights now, Ray had spent watching his partner sleep. He desperately wished he could hitch a ride for his nocturnal journey -go wherever Bodie went in _his_ mind at night- and feeling quite pathetically alone in the wee hours, some comfort drawn from the physical closeness, but knowing that Bodie was -for the present at least- lost to even him.

 Absent in all but body.

 Ray used to be such a _good_ sleeper- sleep anywhere, anytime, he could….

A few winks in the Capri in a lay-by, a quick head-down on his desk, even -once or twice- vertically while leaning against a wall. By contrast, now, it was often more than he could manage to snatch a few feeble hours of fitful flailing per night- more often than not waking exhausted, confused and disorientated.

He’d considered the cold, unseasonably damp weather as a possible source of his night-time angst, rescinded his usual habit of sleeping in the buff, and taken to wearing an old, extremely tatty t-shirt and his army-surplus thermal long-johns (great for on the bike) to bed, much to Bodie’s very vocal disgust. But each night when he did finally… _finally_ ……doze off, his clothes quickly became unpleasantly damp and musky-smelling as if all his suppressed worries had liquefied and were working their way out via his pores.

His thick, unmanageably curly hair became a sweaty, tangled mess and he was tempted more than once to shave the whole damn lot off for good and all. But Bodie liked it, and what Bodie liked mattered to him. Mattered pretty much more than anything else… besides, he reckoned somehow he’d feel less ‘Ray’ without hair.

And dreams. He misses the dreams he used to have. Misses them more than he would have believed possible. Vivid ones that could have been….. _seemed_ …..so very, very real.

 Sometimes he flew…… Over the London rooftops, taking in his old haunts; Limehouse, where as a young copper he had walked a beat, Greenwich Park -a prime spot for a picturesque Sunday run and quick visit to the deer (Ray rather liked the deer) Many- perhaps _too_ many- pubs; visited for pleasure and- the flip side of the coin- when rounding up the human detritus that accumulated there.

He liked those flying dreams.

 No wings- he wasn’t a sodding angel after all, despite an _apparent_ superficial resemblance- but he managed to fly somehow. Like struggling up from the depths of a treacly sea, he pushed doggedly on and on, upwards through the molecules of air -miraculously big enough to grasp and gain some, albeit slight- purchase on.

It was hard work like almost everything else in his life, but so worth it.

 He had another recurring dream too. In it, he was an itinerant circus performer living a transitory life on the open road. _Where?_ He was never quite sure, but it didn’t seem overly important somehow.

While submerged in this dream he often had a slightly uncomfortable -not _quite_ irksome- feeling, buried deep in the recesses of his mind, that he was running away from an unremembered......... _something_. Then the dream came close to nightmare.

In the main, however, he felt strangely happy and vital. Yes, that was it….. _Vital_ , and more than that, he was content with his lot.

 Contentment was something Ray had rarely -if ever- felt in his ‘real’ life, what with the constant striving for something more meaningful, and the intense ambition he had needed to pull- no, make that _claw_ \- himself this far up the career ladder. He had come very close to it recently though, all thanks to Bodie, but even now he finally ‘has’ Bodie where he for so long stubbornly refused to believe he wanted him, he still feels that he, Ray, is not wholly good enough, slightly... _lacking_ …like he’s not quite the person everyone thinks he is.

A shadow.

A wraith.

The act he was supposed to perform in this phantom dream circus changed almost nightly, but the exultation of freedom and the pride of achievement against almost insurmountable odds permeated his very psyche, and he usually awoke feeling thoroughly buoyed up and ready for whatever the day could throw at him.

The comfort he gained from these strange and inexplicable dreams was more of a loss to Ray than sleep itself. Freedom was something he valued highly, and felt the loss of acutely.

Actually, at times, the fantasy of a life on the open road _did_ hold a strong appeal for Doyle.

Until the never-to-be-forgotten day that Bodie and he had finally cemented their Odd Couple relationship into a thing of wonder, comfort, and sheer bloody blistering joy, running away was a thing he thought about often.

More than once he’d packed a bag and written his resignation….

He hadn’t previously considered himself the flighty type –unlike his partner, who had spent most of his youth wandering the World’s darker recesses. He _liked_ London, and felt settled there- even with (or despite) the constant upheaval of moving flats so tiresomely often. But, much as he valued his job, life in CI5 had discombobulated him and made him question everything he did, said, and felt even more than was usual for moralistic Doyle.

 The night stretched away…… into infinity, and beyond. Doyle’s eyes were heavy and hot but they just _wouldn’t_ stay closed. His brain refused stubbornly to power down, his heart hammered and his thin gangly limbs twitched with a suppressed energy that wouldn’t dissipate. He’d even fitted in an extra workout today to try to tire himself further- to get the coveted weariness in his body that he felt in his mind so often these days.

He rolled over, tutting.

The rain was still coming down in sheets and the wind had picked up something fierce. A fox yelped eerily in the street outside and the first stoical birds, seemingly undeterred by the torrential rain, were warming up for the matinee performance of their twice-daily concert.

 Ray really loved Dusk. The quality of the fading light and the birdsong brought out the slumbering (Ha! The irony!) artist in him- but he was beginning to have a real antipathy for Dawn- especially as he often hadn’t managed to sleep until it- _She_ \- was nearly upon him. He sighed quietly.

Bodie- for all his ‘be on your guard’ tactical training, could sleep through pretty much anything.

“Bodie, Bodie, how can you just _sleep_? How can you _bear_ to sleep when I’m so awake and I need you?” Doyle thinks like a record with a scratch, relentless thoughts twisting and tangling in his mind and refusing, oh so bloody stubbornly, to just Bugger Off. The reliable, solid and all too human presence of Bodie by his side is at once infinitely reassuring, and at the same time so frustrating it could make him almost weep- but _still_ couldn’t enable him to relax into the sleep his mind and body so craved.

To be fair, his partner had been working more-than-averagely long hours on a rather (‘ _mind- AND arse numbingly_ ’, as Bodie so eloquently put it) tedious surveillance case lately. Thankfully Cowley had relented and assigned some other poor sod the worst of the night-shift, but still the poor petal could barely keep his eyes open over his post-dinner beer.

 “Stop snoring, you ass!!” muttered Doyle, heaving Bodie onto his side from the back-sleeping position he’d come to rest in. “ Hard enough to sleep without that god-awful snorting noise you keep making! Can’t you rub a bit of Vicks on your chest or something?”

“Eh???” Bodie, startled, half sat up and looked around blearily….. hair on end and dark eyes fuddled with sleep. “Wassup??”

“Snoring…… You. Are. Doing. It. _Again_.” Doyle bit out through ever-so-slightly gritted teeth. “It’s keeping me awake.”

“Oh. Sorry…” Bodie had the grace to look sheepish. “Bit of a cold coming on, I think… That bloody stakeout's _freezing!_ 'S crippling me immune system, probably.....”

“I was just suggesting you could rub a bit of Vicks on your chest or something.” Cut in Doyle, testily, but at least _attempting_ to hold in the whine that was so desperate to escape.

“Well, how about you do it for me?” Bodie’s typically smug rejoinder came back with a wink, then, musingly…. “I think I might quite like that…”

Doyle- the blacker of the black clouds for the moment suddenly lifting, smiled a small secret smile into the half-light, thumped his baffled partner smartly across the shoulder blades, sighed melodramatically, turned over once and then back again taking most of the blanket with him, whacked the pillow a couple of times for good measure, closed his weary eyes, and….. slept.

 

** The End.  **

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at writing for The Professionals fandom, and my first attempt at fiction in many, many years. I'm basically a reader not a writer, but just occasionally I get an urge to put virtual pen to paper. What follows are the notes that accompanied the fic when first posted on LJ:  
> Been totally unable to sleep lately.... Dog knows why....  
> The upside is that I've written just about my first ficlet in about 20 years!  
> Wrote so much as a teen I totally turned myself off :-(  
> Don't expect much- I wrote this on my Blackberry's memo pad in bed in the wee small hours- but, hey! A start's a start.  
> It's slash, but nothing your mum couldn't handle.....  
> And, as you well know, I don't own the boys- I'm just having a little play with 'em.....


End file.
